analysis
Khulekani Mathe
Who sets the agenda for Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) in South Africa?
Before 1994 the agenda was set in Pretoria by the National Party government. Underpinned by a theory of uneven development based on racial discrimination, apartheid produced an education system that relegated black people to the bottom of the pile in all aspects of life.
Because of the evils of Bantu education, progressive movements within South Africa mobilised and rallied for a more people-driven pedagogy under the slogan “People’s education for people’s power”.
Today, seven years after the abolition of apartheid and the commencement of the democratic order, the agenda for Abet is still set in Pretoria, except it is no longer set by despised apartheid architects but by elite bureaucrats of a legitimate government.
In the name of consultation, educators from different ideological backgrounds, sectors and disciplines are flown to Pretoria (at a huge cost to South African taxpayers and foreign donors) to create a system of education, including Abet. Only excluded are the Abet learners themselves because their inclusion would mean engaging in a bottom-up process of policy development that would obviously be “inappropriate”.
I argue that these meetings serve only one purpose: to legitimise an agenda set elsewhere.
Experience has shown that the government is getting “good advice” from Washington and New York; from big business houses; and sadly not from Cosatu House or any other progressive movements.
The views of the people of Nkandla, District Six, Cato Manor, Alexander and Lebowakgomo are not determinants of policy directions; instead big business and financial institutions set the agenda and our elite bureaucrats are only too happy to take advice and in turn advise their political principals.
After receiving “good advice”, the government declares policy, often against the views of even the members of the tripartite alliance and other progressive forces. In some instances the government silences civil society organisations, stating that some government plans are not up for negotiation and debate, effectively destroying the long culture of consultation that sustained progressive forces until the attainment of the liberation project.
In other instances, the government publishes documents for public comment, and when members of the public and civil society organisations comment, their views are not taken into account; instead they are acknowledged as having made contributions by the listing of their names at the back of an unchanged document.
A clear example of this was the process leading to the enactment of the Adult Basic Education and Training Act No 52 of 2000. For some educators this Act and its precursor, the Adult General Education Bill (of 2000), in a number of its clauses appeared to replicate some provisions of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which made it an imprisonable offence to provide any education to black people unless it was in a government-registered school or centre.
Another of the developments of the post-apartheid era is how education generally and, in particular, Abet have become commodified and traded like Omo, Coke or a Nokia mobile phone, which only those with money can afford and whose chances of leaving the supermarket shelf depends on the value placed on it by advertisers.
I question the extent to which the education system that we have and in particular the Abet system as conceptualised and currently implemented benefits the learners and responds to their real needs and not those of the markets.
For as long as the setting of the agenda for Abet does not include learners, and the government is given and takes “good advice” that prioritises apartheid-debt repayment above social development which Abet is part of sustainable Abet provision in communities will remain an ideal too high to aim for.
For as long as the agenda for Abet is set in boardrooms with a few co-opted shop stewards alongside a balance sheet, Abet provision will always be seen as a nice thing to do after all the “important things” have been done. For as long as purchasing arms at a price that surpasses social spending by far and acquiring luxury vehicles occupy the minds of our public representatives more than the need for people to become literate, I hate to think of the future of Abet.
Forming the basis for the agenda of Abet, I believe, should be the frustrations of aspiring black business persons who cannot be given business loans by financial institutions simply because the previous system ensured that they do not have any collateral.
The fears of young graduates who cannot find jobs, and the vulnerabilities of farm workers who face eviction each day; the motivations of domestic workers who work in white madams’ or black executives’ houses for peanuts, and the anger of landless black people whose thousands of land claims remain unprocessed by the ill-functioning Department of Land Affairs; what inspires the woman of Inanda who wakes up every morning at 3am in order to be at the Durban Early Morning Market at 4am, should inform what becomes the agenda for Abet.
The government should stop abdicating its constitutional responsibility for Abet and donors should stop insisting on the financial sustainability of Abet programmes, because this drives even well-meaning organisations to chase after money and neglect the very people who need Abet most.
The failure of those in authority to ensure that the ordinary people of South Africa inform policy will result in people resisting change, and like the children of Israel in the Bible, they will look back and feel that, just as did apartheid, democracy has failed them.
Khulekani Mathe is director of Tembaletu Community Education Centre in KwaZulu-Natal. This is an edited extract from a paper delivered at the fourth national Abet indaba in Midrand